Published 1:16 pm, Saturday, March 31, 2012

"Yeah, we hear it," he said Friday afternoon as he walked near the club.

Just around the corner from the club, a sanctuary for kids from the travails of the neighborhood, at the corner of Kossuth and Maple streets, yet another impromptu homicide scene shrine was taking shape -- a bouquet of blue pansies wired to a chainlink fence, four candles and two bouquets -- one of delicate pink tea roses -- nestled into some absorbent material in the gutter where the body of 41-year-old Robert "Rah Rah" Moales fell after he was shot near noon.

Bruno's heard gunfire before. But never what he heard Thursday.

"Bangbangbangbangbang," his staccato came out, hardly able to keep pace with his recounting. "Nineteen, twenty shots, I'd say. And I'd say there was more than one weapon."

Police said Moales was shot 10 to 12 times. Later Thursday, police arrested a man named Vincent "Fatal" Wilson. Witnesses said they may have been at least one other gunman.

The sidewalk in front of the Boys and Girls Club is painted with large white and blue checkerboard squares. It's almost like an official designation that this is a no-trouble zone.

In fact, just one month ago, the Connecticut U.S. Attorney's office brought its anti-gun-violence campaign to this little outpost of safety.

Kids from the neighborhood came in to audition for parts in a film being created by a group called 4Peace, some guys who are former gang members from Boston who have turned their efforts to fighting violence.

For the auditions, the youngsters read from scripts with dialogue like, "So Dave, how many more times you gotta be shot?"

That project is continuing. It's been expanded, in fact, to give all the kids some sort of part.

The youngsters who auditioned brought a certain authenticity to their work, notably one young man who admitted to an assault arrest.

He conceded at the start of his audition that, "Things been goin' a little sideways for me."

Clearly, though, he was looking for a different path.

Moales is Bridgeport's seventh homicide victim since the beginning of the year. And on Friday, another shooting victim, a man found on Iranistan Avenue in the city's South End, became the eighth.

Back in front of the club, Bruno waves his arm in a gesture down Park Street.

"This block is safe," he said.

And like in so many of Bridgeport's tough neighborhoods, the meticulously cared-for house, newly sided or painted, sits next to a rat trap most likely owned by an absentee landlord and allowed to deteriorate. Fences topped with razor wire on one block. Shrines to the Blessed Virgin on the next.

Bruno, a former long-time employee of the city's Recreation Department, is built like a safe. At age 70 he looks like he could still handle himself okay.

"I've had a lot of fights," he said. "I'm probably about 392 wins to 360 losses. But I don't get it," he said.

"Could you walk up to someone and just empty whatever you got into them?"

The white shoeboxes with the guns inside and the letter "H" for homicide continue to pile up in the wire cage that is the property division of the Bridgeport Police Department.

The killing of 14-year-old Justin Thompson last January as the boy walked home from a late-night party seemed to galvanize a certain segment of the city to work against the violence.